i ain't scared of your teeth
by Sammykinz
Summary: Stiles stuck his head outside and exclaimed, "What does that mean? I'm not invited down the Yellow Brick Road to find the mutated turkeys from Satan?" (Sterek, pack fic, non-canon plot after 2x04, Jossed by S3.)
1. Chapter 1

tiles was having an insane debate in the grocery store—_Twinkies or Ho-Hos, God help me_—when Derek literally almost scared the shit out of him for like, the millionth time in his very short life.

Stiles managed to not scream or make another unmanly noise when he turned around to find his not-so-favorite sour wolf standing behind him. "One day," he wheezed as he caught his breath, "one day you're gonna do that and I'm gonna drop dead. Like, stone cold dead, _to death_, no warning, and they'll wonder why an almost perfectly healthy sixteen-year-old boy had a massive coronary in the middle of the goddamn dairy aisle."

"This isn't the dairy aisle," Derek pointed out in that semi-infuriating neutral tone, like this was a totally normal thing. "And I don't usually follow you to the store."

Stiles rolled his eyes as he turned back to his inner junk food monologue—the crap that would probably give him a heart attack on its own at a future date. "Oh, right, that's because you're usually following me to school or lacrosse practice or Scott's house,_or_ you're crawling in my window to watch me sleep. This must be so pedestrian for you."

Derek didn't move any closer, but Stiles could feel the unnatural warmth rolling off of him in waves. A spider seemed to skitter up his spine when Derek spoke, his breath hitting the back of Stiles' neck: "I followed you to the store from your house because you didn't go to school today."

"Yeah, you've got Three Dog Night to watch my every move at school—I almost forgot." Stiles thought _fuck it_ and threw the Twinkies _and_ the Ho-Hos in the cart—nothing like living on the edge. "What's up with you still stalking me, anyway? Would've thought you'd have better things to do, being the big bad Alpha and all." He tilted his head back and squinted at Derek's impassive expression. "Maybe work on your poker face."

Derek's lips twitched into something that would've resembled a smile on anyone else. "Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe that's called _deflection_." He looked Stiles over—took in the red sweatshirt, ratty jeans and clunky sneakers—and said, "I'm trying to be nice about this. Why didn't you show up at school today?"

Stiles had another witty retort ready to go, but then he messed up. He turned around to face Derek again, tried to reach past him to get a package of off-brand sticky buns, and winced when the movement pulled his stitches.

Judging by the way Derek's eyes widened and flooded crimson, he noticed.

Stiles hung his head and muttered, "Shit."

Then he was being pinned to the shelving and Derek's face was an inch from his own.

Stiles glanced around furtively and tried to dislodge the arm over his chest, hissing, "Dude, we're in the _store_. Y'know, downtown, where you're the ex-suspected murderer and I'm the sheriff's son? If you're gonna go apeshit, don't do it here." He eyeballed how long Derek's nails were getting and swallowed hard. "Why the hell would you go apeshit, anyway? It's not like you care what happens to—" Annnd fangs and growling and maybe that was the wrong thing to say. "Uh, okay, maybe you do? Care what happens to… me?" The shelf digging into his back started to groan and Stiles had a whacky mental image of Derek destroying the whole grocery store if Stiles couldn't stop putting his foot in his mouth. He hooked his fingers around Derek's wrist and squeezed, hoping he could remove the claws from the vicinity of his throat. "Let me finish getting food and we'll… talk, okay? Assuming you want to do that instead of ripping my face off."

Another growl rumbled through Derek's chest, but he backed off. Marginally. Enough that Stiles could breathe. He felt like a bug under a microscope as he rooted around in his pockets, found his shopping list and the coupons.

Stiles moved to grab the cart's handle, saying, "Screw the sticky buns, I'll make my own. I still have to—"

O… kay, Derek Hale was pushing his grocery cart. That wasn't, y'know, mind-boggling or demented or anything. Stiles wondered if the painkillers Scott's mom had given him at the hospital were actually hallucinogens, because there was _no way this was happening_.

"What else do you need?" Derek asked in a tone that was more like a demand with a snarl on the side.

Stiles found a pen and started crossing things off the list and wondered where they'd find his body when Derek was done murdering him. "Um, I need milk, eggs, some of those tiny pickles…"

They went through the store and picked up everything on the list, getting many an odd look from soccer moms and old ladies alike. After he paid, Stiles went to pick up the bags, but suddenly they weren't there anymore.

He followed Derek—who was carrying everything as though it weighed nothing (to him it probably did)—and said, "Dude, seriously? I'm not falling apart over here. I think I can probably lift a case of Diet Coke, I mean it's _diet_. Wow, nothing from the peanut gallery? Okay, am I gonna have to keep talking incessantly for my own amusement _again_? This gets tiring, you know."

"I wouldn't know because you're always doing it anyway," Derek responded, waiting for Stiles to find his keys and unlock the Jeep before putting the food down on the backseat and shutting the door. Then he had Stiles pinned against the car, crowding into his personal space. "What. Happened. To. You?"

Stiles sighed. "If you give a dog a bone…" Oops, there was that growl again. "Okay, okay. I may have joined my dad on a stakeout last night without giving him a choice in the matter. So we were in his cruiser—"

"Where?"

"Over by the park," Stiles answered, not sure why Derek wanted to know, but what the hell. "Apparently the cops have a crack narc making the rounds and using the park as a meet-up spot—it's a long irrelevant story. Anyway, we both heard this noise, like a weird scraping sound, maybe nails on a blackboard? It kept happening and waiting for the narc was like watching paint dry, so Dad went to check it out. Full moon was last night, so I freaked out 'cause I thought it might've been one of you guys… and I got out of the car." He blinked rapidly, looking at Derek but not really seeing him. "If I hadn't, my dad would probably be dead. So, uh, long story short something most definitely not human jumped us, and my dad has a broken leg and some cracked ribs and a concussion. I got the business end of the claws, and while I was bleeding to death I crawled back to the car and radioed for help, then I passed out and woke up in the hospital." He shrugged. "We got home this morning and there was no food in the house, so I decided to come over here and get some."

Derek was silent—shocker. Putting some distance between them, he asked, "The thing that attacked you, do you remember what it looked like?"

Stiles snorted. "Did you not hear _'bleeding to death'_? But, yeah, I do. I think it was supposed to be a woman—it had, y'know, _a rack_—but if it was then it was one ugly chick. Long dark hair, these crazy-looking eyes, talons for hands… and I think she had wings. I only saw shadows, so I'm not totally—"

He made the mistake of blinking, and Derek was gone. "…sure. I'm not sure." Stiles turned in a circle, looking around the parking lot before shouting to nobody except the guy getting the carts: "Good to know you care!"

Stiles drove back to his house, fed his father (who ate like a ravenous bear and proceeded to start snoring with his face in his mashed potatoes) and reassured Scott for the umpteenth time that no, he wasn't dead.

"So you're really okay?" Scott's worried voice sounded tinny through the cell phone speaker—fucking AT&T and their damnable reception. "Are you sure?"

Stiles silently vowed to strangle Scott the next time he saw him—did the guy _ever_ take a hint? "Yeah, man, I'm fine. Your mom probably made it sound like the _Texas Chainsaw Massacre_—the good ones, not the shitty remake." He was heading up to his room after getting his father settled in the first-floor guestroom. "Don't know what the hell tried to kill us, though… I ran into Derek at the store, and—"

That one got through Scott's impregnable skull pretty quickly. "Wait, wait—at the _store_? Like the grocery store? What the hell was he doing there? Does he even eat normal food?" A pause. "Is he following you around again?"

"You mean still."

"What?"

"You mean 'still' instead of 'again', Scott. I don't think he ever stopped. I told him what happened and he took off. Maybe he knows what it was, or—"

"Dude, maybe it was _him_!" Scott cut in, with his usual lack of manners or definition of _inside voice_. "You've got, like, really huge claw marks all over you, right? What if _he_ attacked you and beat up your dad?"

"Not unless he's gotten some wings and a serious boob job recently, and I didn't see any jugs when I—" Stiles stopped when he opened the door to his room and saw Derek sitting on the edge of his desk. "… Speak of the devil. Gotta go."

"Stiles, wait, what if he has those fake boobs cross-dressers use—"

Click.

"You're looming," Stiles observed, proud that he only jumped a little when he saw Mr. Stubble-and-Leather next to his chemistry textbook. "You're pretty good at it—must be a carefully honed skill, like that poker face thing we were talking about earlier."

As usual, speaking to Derek was like speaking to a brick wall… albeit a very sexy one that could talk when it chose to. "Have you changed the dressings on your wounds?"

"No," Stiles answered, and if he sounded defensive it was because part of him actually forgot to do it (thank you, Vicodin), and the other part was chickenshit and afraid to see what they looked like. The 'I forgot' excuse might seem a little flimsy considering the package of sterile bandages in the bag he was holding. "Uh, I—holy _crap_, Derek, what the—I _liked_ that shirt, you ass!"

With no warning Derek had surged forward and used a claw to slice Stiles' shirt open, straight up the middle. As the tatters fell to the floor Derek also cut the bandages away, revealing a scattering of scratches and deep, stitched-up gouges that left Stiles' pale skin looking ravaged. They came in sets of four, furrowed like cornrows, and ran from his chest to just above his pants.

Stiles looked down at his body and made the mistake of blurting out, "Well, at least I'll have some cool scars."

Derek snarled and slammed a fist into the wall, chunks of plaster flying as his eyes flared red, fangs flashing. The effect was an odd mixture of beauty and danger, a sneak-peek glimpse of the animal living within him… okay, maybe a little too much of a glimpse, screw the poetry.

Stiles backtracked frantically: "Dude, you're gonna wake up my dad! I mean, he's higher than a kite in a hurricane, but he's got guns and shit!" Growling reverberated around the room and he added hastily, "Okay, scars aren't cool, apparently me having scars isn't cool. Even though I already have other ones. Uh. Okay? We agree—not cool. Just. Calm down." He felt around in the bag, grabbed the package of dressings and the tube of analgesic cream. "Here… the back kinda looks like the front. You could, uh, help me out, if you want. Instead of killing me."

He got a grunt in response, and then it was quiet. Like, dead quiet. Derek's teeth and nails receded, and the older man wordlessly took off the bandages on Stiles' back… with his fingers, this time. He inspected the injuries, put on the painkiller, and then started taping them back up again. The cream had a numbing effect, but Stiles could still feel Derek touching him, still shivered involuntarily at the sensation, still thought about all the other things those hands could do to him and hoped the owner of said hands couldn't smell how turned on he was.

Stiles resisted as long as he could, but he had to talk, because it was like breathing for him—necessary and usually _really_annoying. "I love how you go from smashing a hole through sheetrock to playing nursemaid in like three seconds. You, sir, have an interesting skill set." Nothing. No hint of a reaction. "What are you staring at, anyway?"

"Whatever did this to you wasn't planning on letting you go," Derek said in a low, controlled tone—apparently he had been analyzing Stiles' wounds while he was tending to them. "What made it stop? How did you get back to the car?"

"Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you—you Houdinied before I could—I baited it to the cruiser and grabbed the shotgun out of the middle console and blasted it." Stiles squinted, trying to remember details. "I think I hit it at least once, and it shrieked and ran off." When Derek just continued staring, Stiles rolled his eyes. "What? Just because everyone thinks I'm stupid doesn't mean I actually am."

"You're not stupid," Derek murmured, his voice not soft, exactly, but less sharp. "You can be a dumbass that says stupid things, and you can be stupidly reckless and stupidly loyal, but you're not stupid."

Stiles lifted his eyebrows—his weren't so big that they needed to set up biweekly meetings like Derek's, but he tweezed often. "That's probably the nicest thing you've ever said to me, but dude, have you _seen_ my grades? They're in the toilet… not a literal toilet, obviously, but of course you've seen my grades, you're just that creepy." He grabbed some dirty clothes off the floor and tossed them in the laundry, then went over to the desk and groaned at the stack of homework Derek had arranged into a neat pile. "You couldn't have done it for me, too? That'd really clean this place up."

Derek snorted. "If I wanted to clean this place up I'd need a pry bar, a shovel, and a Rug Doctor the size of a third-world country."

"Wow, you know what a Rug Doctor is," Stiles grumbled as he sat down in his rolling chair. "My perception of you has changed completely. Huzzah." He rolled his neck and woke up his computer. "I'm guessing this isn't a pleasure visit despite the Florence Nightingale bit—you think you know what attacked me, right? You want I use Google?" He snorted, too. "Like I'd use anything else. Nobody uses Bing."

Derek said something, but Stiles was suddenly really, _really_ distracted. The man—er, wolf, maybe man-wolf, like a combo item at McDonalds—had taken off his jacket and was leaning over him, one big hand on the back of the chair and the other on the desk, next to the laptop. He smelled like grass and ashes and darkness and it was sort of overwhelming, and Derek was _warm_, radiating heat like a blast furnace in the winter. His jaw was strong and that line seemed to run down his whole body, the man was ridiculously good-looking and he was just so _close_…

…and one of his arms was moving, fingers snapping in front of Stiles' face. He spoke again—which Stiles _felt_ through where Derek's chest was pressing on his shoulder—and Stiles managed a deeply intellectual response of, "… huh?"

"If you ever tell anybody I just repeated a joke that included the word 'yahoo' three times and you _still_ didn't hear it, I really will rip your throat out." Derek paused. "Actually, if you tell anybody I'm remotely willing to joke around with you, I'll rip your throat out with—"

Stiles feigned a yawn and finished the threat: "_Your teeth_. I know, I know, man—you ever heard about an old dog and new tricks?"

Derek's mouth was quickly up against his ear, and Stiles could practically feel the graze of fangs on his skin. "You ever heard of using your fucking fingers to type on a keyboard?"

Oh God, _fingers_ and _fucking_ in the same sentence. Stiles made a mental note to have his sexual identity crisis later and hope that the desk would hide his massive boner from the general public. "Yep, yeah, I think I have. What, uh, what am I typing?"

Derek's fingers—which had somehow gotten on Stiles' arm, _how did he not notice that_—curled inwards for an instant, burning hot and leaving bruises. He was across the room in a flash, like nothing ever happened, lying on Stiles' bed and saying, "Give me everything you can find on harpies."

Oh, goodie.

"… annnd apparently they like to take things that don't belong to them. Like kleptos, pretty ones with talons and boobs, and I needed an interior designer so I hired Jackson because he just has this eye for color—dude, are you even _listening_ to me?"

"Yeah, yeah, no, I'm listening." Scott's eyes were focused on Allison, who was standing at her locker as he and Stiles were coming down the stairs. "How do we figure out why the harpy's here, though? Just for you? And does it have a…" His eyebrows knitted together. "A… flock? Like birds?"

"From what I read it sounds like they're pack animals, kind of like you guys," Stiles said, "so there's got to be more of them holed up somewhere. And lemme tell you, Mr. Alpha is less than thrilled. He said something last night about rounding everybody up, like a search party, and trying to figure out where the harpies are roosting. I'd like to know why that chick nearly killed me." He belched. "That kinda sucked. The nearly-killing-me thing, not the burp. The burp was good."

Scott tried to pat Stiles on the shoulder, but it ended up being nearer to his face, and he ran off down the hall to slobber all over Allison.

Well, he didn't _slobber_ on her, but there was some kissy-face and it was gross and why the hell had Stiles even _come_ to school? The pain meds combined with his Adderall—which he _had_ to remember to pick up after school, needed to do that, that was important—were fogging him out and that last dialogue with Scott was the most rational thing he'd said all day.

Not that talking about Grecian mythical bird-ladies was normal, _per se_, but it really wasn't up there on the weird scale for him.

Derek Hale, who had hung out in Stiles' room until two o'clock in the morning—prowling and breathing down his neck and reading Stiles' mother's beat-up copy of _The Swiss Family Robinson_ with a measure of care—currently topped the weird scale. Then, to bring even _more_ weirdness to the party (if that was even _possible_), Derek had actually _thanked_ Stiles for translating what they could find in the Argents' bestiary about _avis mulieres_, AKA _bird women_.

And then he had hopped out the window and gone off to do… sour wolf-type things until the sun came up, Stiles didn't _care_about it. He slept his remaining four hours like a rock and then woke up feeling like he was dead, even if that made no sense. Not that anything was making a lot of sense, because _nothing_ made sense.

Stiles forgot to stop at Walgreens for his pills on the way home. Actually, he got "home" spectacularly wrong three times, pulling into driveways that were decidedly too nice to be his.

_Really_ good drugs, man.

Stiles parked his Jeep in front of the right house (fourth time's the charm) and headed inside, dragging his book bag behind him like it weighed 300 pounds. The painkillers had worn off in his last class of the day, and just walking was an effort. He fumbled with his keys and got inside, locking the door behind him and going to check on his dad.

He was asleep in the guest room bed, a rerun of _Days of Our Lives_ playing on the TV and a gun resting by his unbroken leg. Jesus, that guy was always prepared—unlike Stiles, who couldn't find his toothbrush without a twenty-minute adventure quest.

Things were going awesomely until Stiles stepped into his room and saw the four vertical talon marks etched into the glass of his window.

His hand flew to his chest, where an identical pattern had been carved into his skin. The wave of terror that washed over Stiles had him stumbling back towards the door—_what if it's still there whatifit'sstillthere_—and Derek was leaping out of the closet and clamping a hand over his mouth so he couldn't scream, dragging him into the darkness and yanking the door shut behind them.

Inside it smelled like dirty socks and moldy Doritos, even to Stiles' nose, so he couldn't imagine what it was like for Derek. But really, _what the fuck was going on_, _why_ was Derek pressing him against the wall and… smelling him? What?

Wanting to shout but remembering that the harpy could be outside and that his dad was downstairs, Stiles whispered harshly, "Derek, what in the holy _hell_—"

"You smell like rotting birds," Derek growled.

That was a new one and Stiles couldn't help himself. "Dang, you really know how to turn a dude on—"

"Shut. Up." Derek's words were low and snarly and came with individual punctuation. "You smell like _them_, dumb ass—the harpies. I couldn't smell it last night with the stink from the hospital all over you, but I do now." His eyes flashed red, so close that Stiles noticed different shades of color, and thought that even though he was about ready to piss his pants, Derek's wolfed-out eyes were almost… pretty. "There's more than one and they were at the school with you, they had to be. Did you talk to Scott?"

Stiles' brain was stuck on _thinking Derek's eyes were pretty_, so he didn't say anything until he heard another growl. He played back the question in his head and snorted out, "Uh, yeah, as much as I ever talk to Scott. Which is to say, I talk and he makes disturbing pelvic thrusts in Allison's direction. So the answer is kind of a no. I did tell him about the wolfy treasure hunt later, but his brilliant theory is probably still that you did this to me."

For a split second Derek got even closer, enough that Stiles could feel his whole body pressed against his own, blazing warm and fiercely strong—he was boxed in. Eyes glowed red in front of him, and Derek's hands were on the wall on either side of his head, bracketing him in place. Stiles heard plaster cracking as Derek's nails grew, but he managed not to flinch. He knew he and Derek weren't on the best terms trust-wise, but Stiles was pretty sure Scott's idea was crap—if Derek had wanted to hurt him (there had certainly been plenty of times _that_ was true), why the hell would he wait until now? Or keep saving his ass from certain death?

And then suddenly Derek was out in the bedroom, the door swinging wide open in his wake. In the closet, Stiles struggled to take a breath, to get the tingling under his skin to fade, to stop sweating unattractively. He sagged back against the wall, knees weak and heart pounding triple time, but not for the reason anyone would think.

Stiles hadn't been _afraid_ of Derek trapping him in a tiny, dark space with no one else around—he _liked_ it. In the absolute most perverted way possible.

"She's gone," Derek rumbled, from over by the window.

Stiles put on his best poker face and hoped Derek would chalk his elevated pulse up to fear. He emerged from the closet (ha) and came over to look at the scratched glass. "How do you know it was just one?"

"The scent's not very strong, so she was probably by herself," Derek replied. "Maybe her thing for you isn't a flock-sponsored venture. I doubt she'd chance making a solo move after what happened the last time." He made a noise less like a laugh and more like he had broken glass in his throat. The sound of it made Stiles wince. "Presuming we're not throwing me under the bus for something I didn't do. Again."

"Hey," Stiles started, tone defensive, "that was Scott's lame-ass idea both times, not mine, so you can shove it—"

Derek held up a hand. "Just… don't, okay? Don't bother." He opened the window and crouched on the sill, adding over his shoulder, "Stay inside, do your homework, and try not to die."

Stiles stuck his head outside and exclaimed, "What does _that_ mean? I'm not invited down the Yellow Brick Road to find the mutated turkeys from Satan?"

Surprise, surprise—Derek was already gone.


	2. Chapter 2

At around ten o'clock that night, Stiles slid into the passenger seat of Derek's Camaro. "The lack of streetlights makes you even angstier than usual. You should lock your doors." He paused at the look on the sour wolf's face. "What, you didn't know I was here? Seriously?"

"I knew," Derek muttered, and if his tone was a little defensive, well, then Stiles' night just got figuratively brighter. "I could smell you. But you're not supposed to be here—I told you to stay home."

They were in an older part of Beacon Hills, surrounded by brick buildings and old factories and R-rated bookstores. The Camaro was parked on the side of the road in a row of other cars—a gleaming black jewel among some serious rust buckets. Stiles had left the Jeep a couple of blocks away, because people recognized it as belonging to the sheriff's kid. He wanted to avoid that, in case… of what, exactly, he wasn't sure.

"No, you told me to stay inside and do my homework and try not to die." Stiles started ticking off points on his fingers. "I did my homework—and most of Scott's, by the way—I stayed inside, except for the last hour and a half or so, and hey, I'm not dead yet." He tried to find a comfortable position in the low-slung car and kind of succeeded by sitting on his legs. "So, really—"

Derek's hand snapped out suddenly, reaching over and grabbing Stiles by the front of his jacket. His voice rose in irritation. "How long have you been wandering around by yourself?"

"Ow ow _ow_," Stiles half-yelped, bruises pulling taut alongside sutures. He was regretting not taking that painkiller before he left, even if he probably would've wrapped his Jeep around a tree at some point if he had. "Long enough to gag at the nightmare that is Scallison and to referee a trash ping-pong match between Erica and Boyd, and pop in on Isaac—"

Derek had him pulled in so close that they were breathing on each other and fogging up the windshield. Derek smelled the same as earlier, except for some more sweat, and hey, that really wasn't all that bad. _Great, I like the guy's sweat… what's next, his foot fungus? God I hope he doesn't have foot fungus._

Derek released his grip on Stiles and looked like he didn't know what the hell to do when Stiles didn't retreat back over the gearshift. Finally, with a mix of curiosity and trepidation, Derek asked, "How did you know where I'd send them?"

"It was easy to figure out. The park's where this mess—" Stiles gestured with flapping hands at himself, "—happened, so you'd want someone to hang out there even though you don't expect that the harpies have made a literal nest in a tree. But I told you about the narc, so you couldn't send Scott with Allison because that'd get back through the gossipy cops to the Argents, and you couldn't send Isaac because he's a fugitive, and you probably don't want another bad touch from the law, so you sent Erica and Boyd. I figured you'd keep Isaac at home—seriously, man, _trolley cars_, really—and I went over and said hey-howdy. Then Scott texted me and said that he and Xena Warrior Princess are necking out in the woods. Any other burning questions?"

Derek's mouth twitched, almost as if he _did_ have some burning questions, and that made Stiles feel… tingly. So tingly, in fact, that he almost missed it when Derek spoke again, quieter, "How did you know where _I_ would be?"

Stiles sputtered a laugh. "Dude, you brood a _lot_. Brooding is best done in the dark. Ergo, the darkest part of town that isn't the woods. The car's also kind of a giveaway. A beauty, but a—"

And then Derek put a hand over Stiles' mouth and made a shushing noise, which was borderline ridiculous, like a babysitter waving a finger at an errant child, but only if that babysitter was hairy and had on-demand fangs and claws and fur.

Clearly Derek had heard something over Stiles' babbling, so Stiles shut up and tried to ignore how his palm felt against his lips. Which was very hard to do, because then Stiles started thinking about how Derek's… _other things_ might feel on or in his mouth… wait, serious and probably deadly situation, not the time for that.

They stayed that way for almost a full minute, and then Stiles couldn't stand it anymore. He licked Derek's hand to get him to let go, plastered on an eager expression, and whispered, "What is it, Lassie? Is Timmy in the well?"

Derek stared at him for a long moment. "Stiles."

"Yes, Derek?"

"Do you have a concussion?"

"No, why—"

Derek cuffed Stiles upside the head and got out of the car. "I didn't want to risk any more brain trauma—that one cell is lonely enough as it is. Let's go."

"Funny. You're a funny man." Stiles rubbed at his head and glowered as he followed Derek down the street, keeping to the shadows. He glanced around, saw nothing out of the ordinary, and asked, "Which building? And why am I with you again?"

"The old cannery with the tuna billboard. And you're with me because…" Derek paused and cleared his throat. "Because I need to check this out and there's no time to get any other backup."

They were close to the warehouse in question, and could see that its metal sides were deformed and warped by time and abandonment, that there was glass missing from all the windows—the whole clichéd nine yards. It was adorned with a mural of a smiling tuna, which looked less like something you'd want to eat and more like something you'd want to kill with fire. A half-collapsed chain link fence failed to look intimidating or keep anything out.

There were no signs of life, at least not to human senses. At the time, Stiles thought he'd have nightmares because of the demented-looking fish—there would be nightmares, but they wouldn't be the tuna's fault.

The two of them were crouching behind some trashcans near a homeless person that was definitely dead.

Stiles resisted the urge to gag. "You sure know how to make a guy feel special—this is more charming than the rotting birds thing. What did you hear, anyway?"

"Wings. I heard wings. Like feathers ruffling." Derek sounded reluctant to use a word like _ruffling_.

Stiles contemplated that as they dashed across the street, to approach the building from what had once been the office entrance. "Could be a seagull."

"We're not near the ocean and it'd have to be a seagull the size of a fucking rhinoceros," Derek said. "Now shut up and stay behind me."

The door opened with some nudging, creaking on rusty hinges. The place was a dump on the inside—what had once been a secretary's desk was now a sad-looking mass of rotted wood; a schedule that was never going to be fulfilled took up a wall; some fluorescent tube lights hung crookedly down from the ceiling. It smelled like mold and dirt and expired fish.

Derek's boots crunched on broken glass and trash and old beer cans, followed shortly by Stiles' sneakers. They went down one hallway and then another, passed bathrooms and a fire exit, and then pushed through some double doors onto the factory floor.

Stiles was in the middle of saying "do you smell something burning" when Derek shoved him in the chest so hard he fell and landed on his ass and skidded a couple of feet away. He felt stitches snapping and his body screaming and blood starting to flow. Smoke was pouring out from behind the canning machines and a bunch of guns were going off and Derek was getting _shot_, multiple fucking times, blocking the bullets from hitting Stiles because he was just _laying_ there, fragile and human and _screw that_.

Stiles scrambled back to his feet as Derek fell forward, through-and-through holes in his torso leering and losing blood. Stiles caught Derek's dead—_no no no, not dead_—weight and locked his knees, swearing with the effort but managing to keep them both upright. The thunder of the guns had been deafening and now Stiles' ears rung as the assholes in the factory paused to reload.

He started shuffling back the way they came, muttering, "Come on, big guy, this way." It was like trying to manhandle a bleeding life-sized Ken doll.

Stiles could feel his own blood soaking through his shirt, his chest and back flaring with pain, but he was more aware of Derek's blood sliding slick between his fingers. He managed to stick close to the wall and get them around the corner and had time to think that this trap hadn't been for them, and that whomever was behind it hadn't seen through the smoke, didn't know Derek wasn't the harpy… yet.

Chris Argent's voice echoed from behind them: "Hey, birdie! Why don't you just give up? We're going to catch you, you must know that—your roost is toast and your flock is next!"

And the hunters started laughing, like it was a joke instead of part of a horror show.

They made it around the next corner and were three steps from the fire exit when Derek's clutching hands were able to pull them to a standstill.

"Stiles," he rasped out, blood dribbling down his chin, coating too-sharp teeth bright red, features wincing as his body tried to heal. "They're going to be waiting outside, there's too many of them to outrun. Leave me here, maybe you can get away—"

"Oh, you are _not_ pulling that crap on me," Stiles said, and rammed his shoulder into the emergency door, barreling outside as an alarm started blaring.

Of course, there was a guy waiting with a rifle on the other side of it; Stiles held Derek up with one arm and smashed his fist into the asshole's face. He went down and they kept going. Luckily the Camaro wasn't parked that far away, but neither were Argent and his crew—Stiles heard engines start seconds after they got outside. He hustled Derek down the street, suddenly glad for the lack of streetlights; the sky was cloudy, making even more in the way of shadows, so if there were any snipers around their job would be much harder.

Stiles thought it was interesting that Chris Argent found the mysterious harpies to be more important than werewolves on the full moon, and then Stiles wondered how he had time for all these thoughts while he was running for his—pardon, _their_—lives.

When they neared the car, Stiles started feeling Derek up, saying, "Keys keys keys—where are your goddamn keys?"

Derek stiffly removed his keys from the right-hand pocket of his jacket and lurched for the driver's door.

"Oh no, nope, not happening," Stiles said, grabbing the keys and popping the passenger door. "Get in, I'm driving."

Derek growled even though he was in no shape to be intimidating. "Over my dead—"

"Hey, you let Scott drive that time—_fuck me_!" Stiles saw five pairs of headlights making their way to the street from behind the cannery, coming fast.

Luckily Derek wasn't a complete idiot and relented, getting in the car and slamming the door behind him. Stiles slid over the hood of the Camaro and got behind the wheel, shoving the key into the ignition and making the world's ugliest K-turn to get the hell out of there.

They headed back towards town with three cars in formation behind them—two of them broke off down other streets and Stiles knew they'd be back to try and box them in. He was hoping the Camaro's speed would be enough to beat them, since it seemed all hunters drove SUVs.

There was blood on Stiles' hands, on the steering wheel, _everywhere_, stinking up the car with its copper tinge. He risked a quick glance at Derek and asked in a tone that was a little too high for his liking, "Those weren't wolfsbane bullets, right?"

Derek grunted, then remembered to use his words. "No," he answered through gritted teeth, "I got shot six times—if they were wolfsbane bullets I'd be dead by now. I don't know what the fuck they are, but they hurt like a bitch."

"How are you still _talking_?"

"This has happened before, moron—drive faster!"

Stiles pushed on the gas. His eyes flicked down to the speedometer, which was climbing higher and higher, the Camaro's engine roaring like it was in pain. The headlights were still behind them, and as they blew through a four-way stop, Stiles knew it would be a matter of seconds before Argent attempted to have them cut off. "I'm going to do something with your car that you're not gonna like very much."

"You touching the damn wheel's enough to give me an ulcer—just do it."

The needle was hovering around 90. Stiles exhaled and took a blood-crusted hand off the wheel to curl around the gearshift. The next intersection was coming up fast, and a concrete divider appeared on the driver's side, to serve as a barrier to keep someone turning from the left side from crossing four lanes of traffic. This was a busier intersection even at the late hour. The light was changing from yellow to red as they approached, and Stiles waited until the last possible second, just before the opposing traffic surged forward—

He slammed the Camaro into a different gear and jerked the wheel, making a sharp U-turn around the end of the barrier. The back of the car fishtailed, but Stiles was used to the Jeep doing that and rode it out, slowing down as they merged with traffic. He watched Allison's father's red SUV try to U-turn the barrier and fail, the boxy vehicle landing on its side. Horns blew and tires squealed.

Stiles whooped. "I am _awesome_! God, he had that one coming." He looked at Derek again, slouched against the leather seat, drenched scarlet and looking very pale under the streetlights. His brain caught up with the situation. "Derek? I thought you said you got shot six times."

Glassy, vulnerably human eyes shifted to meet his. "I did. Say that."

"But I only see four holes." Stiles flailed around when he realized what that meant and that he was the only person around to do something about it, kind of like that thing with Derek's arm that seemed like it had happened a lifetime ago. "Oh God, oh _shit_, the other two are still in there?"

Derek looked down at himself, looked at the red pool he was sitting in, and nodded once. "Yep."

"Crap—guess we're taking a trip to the vet."

The next morning, Stiles had another brush with death when Derek jumped unannounced into the Stilinskis' tiny-ass laundry room through the window.

Stiles didn't notice until he turned around and _bam_, werewolf! "Oh my _God_, Derek!" he exclaimed, and then slapped a hand over his own mouth, praying like hell his dad hadn't heard him. Through his fingers, he hissed, "You need to stop doing that, or I swear I'm going to misappropriate a taser and shove it someplace the sun doesn't—"

"Are you okay?" Derek interrupted, and he sounded… _concerned_? Without being growly? Was that even a thing?

"Did you have a stroke after I dropped you off last night?" Stiles retorted, in a tone that didn't match his words or his bewildered expression. "You actually sound less dog and more human—be still my beating heart."

Ah, _there_ was the requisite snarl of the day. "I could make that happen, if you want." There was no threat behind Derek's words, and _that_ certainly wasn't normal. He rubbed a hand over his face—the guy looked pretty damn tired, probably from healing—and asked again, slower, in case Stiles couldn't understand him because he was mentally deficient, "Are. You. Okay?"

Stiles sprayed one of his dad's shirts with stain remover before dropping it into the waiting washing machine. "I'm good, man. After we took care of your little, ah, problem, I might've noticed my blood loss and had Scott take me over to the hospital. Again."

Scott had met Stiles and Derek at the veterinary clinic—okay, wait, no, back up, he didn't _meet_ them; he got there fifteen minutes_late_. Which in a sort of life-or-death situation wasn't comforting, at least to Stiles. Thankfully he'd had the forethought to copy a key to the place months ago, mostly because Scott was constantly losing his own.

Stiles was in the middle of pulling the first bullet out of Derek when Scott finally showed up—he was late because he had to take Allison over to the hospital, where her dad was being treated for minor injuries from a car accident. Huh. It turned out it didn't matter _when_ he got there, because all Scott ended up doing was puking in the bushes outside and offering moral support while Derek tried to not rip Stiles into shreds or scream his lungs out.

As soon as the second bullet hit the tray, Derek had roared—an agonized sound, _so_ much worse than the car's engine—and jumped out a window like the wild thing he was.

Stiles had wondered out loud what it would be like to ride on his back like he was a pony and passed out, much to Scott's panic and chagrin.

Now, Stiles picked up a pair of his jeans, dumped them into the washer, and tried to forget about the feel of cold metal forceps in his hand. He tried to forget about the sound of muscles squelching and spreading, knowing he was causing someone pain, specifically causing _Derek_ pain, hurting instead of helping.

Stiles was kind-of-not-really-_oh_-_yes_ freaking out, and the thing he was best at while freaking out was talking, even if nothing he said made sense. He was looking anywhere but at Derek and talking faster and faster with every word, barely pausing for air. "No big deal, not really. Scott's mom sewed me up again, like the cupcake she is, and force-drank me—is that a thing, force-_drinking_, like force-_feeding_—orange juice and promised not to tell my dad about my second visit if I promised to stop shredding myself up like cheese on a grater. Those were her actual words and there were a lot of food-related analogies in there. Are you hungry? I'm hungry."

"Stiles." Derek moved the laundry basket on the floor between them to the side with his foot, and put his hands—huge yet fascinatingly careful—on Stiles' shoulders. "You're rambling."

Stiles blinked, catching his breath and wondering why the hell Derek's presence had gone from freaking him out to calming him down in like, 2.8 seconds. "You think so?"

"Just a little." Derek was closer, suddenly, and it wasn't surprising—there was no such thing as personal space around this guy. His expression changed, smoothing out into something Stiles hadn't seen before and barely had time to wonder _what the fuck_before Derek said, "Thank you. For last night."

Stiles blinked again—_holy shit, he's_ grateful—and his mouth flapped a couple of times before he could find some words. "You're, uh, you're welcome. No problem." He poked Derek in the ribs, touching a shirt that he knew had smooth, unblemished skin underneath, like some kind of miracle. "You owe me, though." _Even though you saved my life first_. "And if I'm making you a sandwich—because you look like you need a sandwich and a nap—I'm _so_ going to own your ass."

"All right, so I get the hunters setting the warehouse on fire—the smoke provided cover for smell and sight, and it also destroyed where the harpy was staying. The noises I heard were prerecorded—they had to be if this was a setup—maybe to make her think someone was moving in on her territory." Derek had torn through his first ham-and-cheese-on-rye and was working on another. "What happened to the bullets?"

Stiles choked on potato chips in his flailing journey to get to his desk, because he actually had an answer for that one—sort of.

They were eating in Stiles' room, because his dad might've been essentially immobile and drugged to the gills, but he wasn't deaf. Now probably wasn't the best time to try to re-introduce him to the sour wolf… who wasn't being so sour anymore. Personality revamp or not, he was pretty sure his dad would try to shoot Derek on sight, and Stiles was officially done with people shooting Derek.

Stiles finished chewing, dug through all his homework, and found the Tupperware container with one bullet in it. He grabbed his plate and trekked over to Derek.

Stiles sat down next to him on the bed—close but not touching—and said, "I gave the other one to Scott, which he's supposed to give to Allison at school today. She's going to check her parents' armory and see what matches." He opened the container and held the bullet in his hand; it looked like the last bit of a melted candle, if somebody squished it with something heavy. "They're hollow-points, obviously, custom dum-dum rounds for a .308 rifle—maybe a Saiga, more likely a Winchester. It doesn't really matter what kind of gun it was, the damage is the same." He paused for dramatic flair.

Derek looked exasperated and said through a rather unattractive mouthful of food, "_But_ there's something weird about these particular bullets."

Stiles rolled the deformed bullet between his fingers. "Yeah, and I don't know how to describe it." He moved closer, managed to wait and not stare openly as Derek swallowed, and then held the round up to the light and pointed. "You see those little tooling marks there? At least what I think are tooling marks, since I'm making this crap up as I go?"

Derek nodded. "What do you think it means?"

"I think the Argents modified these bullets specifically for harpy hunting. I'd need to see one that's intact, but it looks like they're designed to suction in on themselves during impact. Like, imploding instead of exploding, the opposite of what most people would want a bullet to do." Stiles made a face. "That's part of the reason why you bled so much; there was no shrapnel, but anything that the bullets tore through had the blood directed out the open wounds behind them, like an irrigation system."

"All of the lore we've read so far associates harpies with air," Derek said. "In fact, the main theme in killing them is strangulation. They fly, they're avian creatures, so air is essential to their power and strength—it's a trigger. Like the moon is for us. Let's say there's something in their physical structure that's different from ours, dependant on air—if you take that extra air away, or replace it with something else…"

"It probably wouldn't kill them if they can heal like you guys do, but the effect would be enough to slow them down, make them weaker." Stiles let out a strained laugh. "This is so messed up."

Derek snorted. "What else is new?" He went very still. "Your father's moving around downstairs."

Stiles sighed the sigh of the long-suffering and stood up, grabbing their empty plates to take with him, but leaving the bullet behind. "Probably trying to save some of his masculinity and make the adventurous trek to the bathroom on his own." He was out the door, but stuck his head back into the room to say, "Y'know, you don't have to poof while I'm gone. You can, uh, hang out here, or meditate, or whatever the fuck it is you do when nobody's looking. I'll be back, and maybe I'll bring cookies."

Derek didn't hang out or mediate while Stiles was gone. He held the bullet between his fingers—still warm from Stiles' touch—and tilted his head, thinking.

Planning.

Checking to make sure there were no immediate threats, Derek placed the bullet on the nightstand and kicked off his boots. He laid down and shut his eyes. And if he was curled up like a harmless puppy on the mattress when Stiles came back and he practically _heard_ the kid grinning, well, it wasn't like it was going to happen again. He had a reputation to keep.


	3. Chapter 3

On Saturday night of the same week, when normal people partied and went on dates and watched TV, Stiles was panting and sweating and swearing, and _not_ in a feel-good sex-related way.

He was running for his life (oh look, something _different_) through the woods of Beacon Hills in pitch-black darkness, with one hideous, pissed off harpy shrieking and swerving through the trees behind him.

Stiles crashed through the underbrush, his legs pumping and his pulse pounding in his ears. Adrenaline was coursing through his veins, fueled by determination and absolute terror, because that bitch was _scary_.

Stiles' wounds burned and pulled and sweat stung his eyes. Every five or six steps he had to dodge around or jump over an obstacle, like a large boulder or an old log. He could hear the harpy's wings whistling as she glided through the air, talons scraping through tree bark just as easily as they had torn his skin.

He didn't dare look back because he knew that would be when his super-klutz powers would activate and he'd trip and be bird food. Of course, as soon as he even _thought_ about his less-than-graceful tendencies (usually around glass objects and family heirlooms), Stiles' foot caught on a raised tree root and he met the ground face-first.

He flipped over, the pain of the fall and smacking his head on a rock barely registering over the panic that was welling up in his throat. Stiles started scrabbling backwards through the dirt and leaves, a breathless mantra of "oh shit, oh shit, oh shit," coming out of his mouth.

The harpy extended her legs and landed, coming to a stop on the forest floor. She shimmered, dark green skin seeming to reflect light even when there wasn't any, and her clothes were rags, doing little to protect her modesty. Her wings were huge, bat-like in shape but covered in feathers.

And her talons… Stiles could see them up close and _way_ too personal, much clearer than he had the first time. They were like regular hands with the thumbs folded in against the palms, but instead of fingers she had four five-inch-long claws—had to be a pain in the ass if she wanted a manicure.

The harpy didn't get close enough for Stiles to see her face, but he noticed a pair of slanted, smoldering green eyes as she stalked towards him, ready to pounce—and then Derek was between Stiles and the harpy, crouched low and shadowed, just this side of not wolfed out.

Derek presented as startling an image as the harpy did, all gnashing teeth and red eyes and deadly claws. Holy _crap_ he was an awesome thing to see… and Stiles wondered when in the course of recent events he'd stopping being afraid of him.

Derek let out a roar and slashed upwards with one hand, creating a wound in the harpy that would've left a human with their guts on the ground, spraying blackish-green blood in a wide arc. Derek slashed again with his other hand and partially severed the area that connected her left wing to the rest of her body. The combined blows threw the harpy about a hundred yards away and some trees fell over in her wake. She screamed—a pained and unearthly sound—and fled, her superior speed and the ability to use one wing blurring her to the human eye.

Phase one of the plan had gone perfectly, injuries to the unofficial human punching bag aside. Stiles fished around in his jacket pocket and pulled out one of the walkie-talkies he'd misappropriated from the police station. Breaking into there was becoming a habit—_take your pills, wash the dishes, steal things from your father's workplace. _Like that.

Stiles held down the button on the walkie-talkie. "Okay, she's on the move, Derek cut her twice, she's heading—" He paused and looked up at Derek, who looked human again, but had been staring fixatedly at Stiles since the harpy left. "Uh. You know what direction she went in?"

The red in Derek's eyes fizzled out as he replied tersely, "Northeast. We need to hurry."

"Northeast says the sour wolf—and whoa, wait, what are you _doing_?" Stiles had somehow wound up on Derek's back in the time it took him to blink, and now they were racing through the woods at an inhuman speed. "First the walls and the car, now this. I hate it when you take advantage of me." _Lie_, his lizard brain added. "Where does the injustice end?"

No response from the noble dog-steed, not a big surprise.

_At least now I know what it's like to ride him_, Stiles thought, and holy hell, _definitely_ not the time for that. If it hadn't been for the throbbing pain spreading through Stiles' entire body, something far more embarrassing would've been throbbing just then. He swallowed hard and hooked a casual arm around the werewolf's neck, adding in a voice that _totally did not_ crack, "That'd mean she's heading your way, Scott."

"Got it," Scott said. "We're moving."

Scott and Allison were in Allison's Camry, while Erica and Isaac roamed around on foot like some kind of effed-up Bonnie and Clyde tag-team. Boyd had the Jeep, because he was the only one Stiles remotely trusted to not take his baby for a joyride and/or bust her up.

Stiles and Derek were together because… huh. Well, this misadventure had been Derek's idea in the first place, and so Stiles being bait would be Derek's responsibility… right? That was the way Stiles had rationalized it in his head, because if he _didn't_rationalize it he'd get distracted and killed while he was thinking about conflicted, squishy, _human_ feelings.

Derek put Stiles down when they got to the Camaro and eyed him critically. "You're bleeding. Again."

Stiles gingerly touched his head wound, found that the skin was split open in a three-inch gash. His hand came back sticky and red. "You say that like it's so mundane—like, oh, it's raining _again_, I have to clean the toilet _again_, Stiles is bleeding _again_. I tend to do that when I fall on my face. Or back. Whatever. Ow."

He swayed a little, vaguely aware of Derek's hand on his shoulder, guiding him into the passenger's seat. The leather interior was no longer covered in flaky dried blood; Derek had cleaned it since their shenanigans two days ago. Stiles blinked—something that seemed to take a long, fuzzy time on his end—and Derek was in the car beside him, firing up the engine. It was a role-reversal from the other night minus the gunshot wounds, the car chase and the concussion.

Stiles brought the walkie-talkie back up to his mouth and asked, "Anybody got eyes?"

There was a click and then Isaac's voice: "I see her. I'm a ways back, we're headin' out into the sticks." In Beacon Hills, _the sticks_was anywhere on the other side of the highway, an area which was populated by dilapidated houses, old agrarian land, and the Californian version of rednecks. "She's fast but not airborne. I can't tell if she's healing or not."

"Don't get too close," Derek warned, doing a combination of leaning toward him and driving over 50 that Stiles wasn't crazy about. "She may not be moving well but she's still strong. Scott, Allison, where are you?"

"We just passed under the highway," Allison responded, sounding calm and levelheaded, and Stiles had no idea how she managed that in these situations. Scott could be heard in the background, breathing nasally. "Do you know what street you're on, Isaac?"

"I'm here, I caught up," Boyd said, "but I can't read the fuckin' street sign. Look for the house with all the tires out front, that's where you turn—you'll see it."

"Erica? Make sure you come in from the other side." Stiles winced as the Camaro squealed around a particularly tight corner—his head was pounding and his stitches felt tight. He could feel blood running down his neck. "We gotta try to box her in."

"Aye-aye, captain." Erica's tone was dry. "Are you speaking for Fearless Leader from now on?"

Isaac snorted. "Could we take orders in Morse code? Or tongue clicks? Or, y'know, something a little less _Stilinski_?"

Derek growled in a way that—okay, well, was still a _tiny_ bit intimidating to Stiles, minuscule but hair-raising all the same. And if it kind of turned him on, well, it was no different than anything else Derek did.

"Hey, shut up!" Scott exclaimed, although it wasn't because he was defending Stiles' honor. "We're here, I just saw her! Isaac, she's in that house, the big white one."

"I'm behind it, I went around through the bushes. Wow, that place is a pit. I only smell one of 'em, though—she's by herself, I think." Isaac's tone lost its luster. "What's the plan here? We didn't talk about phase two."

"That's because nobody thought phase one would work, dipshit," Erica sniped, although she didn't sound quite so confident, either. "What do we do now, guys? Any brilliant suggestions?"

"We go in after her?" Allison suggested, as the Jeep and the Camaro came down the street, parking hastily by her Toyota. They now had the harpy more or less boxed in. The occupants of the other cars got out and she looked at Derek through the darkness. "What's the goal here?"

Derek rumbled—literally fucking _rumbled_ and Stiles died a little on the inside—as he mulled that over, staring at the house and taking in the peeling paint, the rotted front porch, the knee-high weeds in the yard. "We don't want to kill her," he said after a moment. "Not yet, anyway."

"Especially since we don't know how to do that," Boyd added, in a way that managed to be condescending without being smug.

Allison shook her head. "Not totally true—that bullet Stiles gave me matches some my dad has, so they're made to hurt a harpy." She paused as she opened her crossbow, which she had seemingly pulled out of thin air. "Not that we have any bullets. Or guns."

Scott was wearing his worried puppy face, eyebrows knitted together. "Is barging in there really a great idea?"

"She's alone, she's hurt, and she can't fly," Isaac drawled into the walkie-talkie, so those with human hearing caught the words along with the lupine folks. "How hard can it be? She hasn't come out here and we're making enough noise for a freakin' bar mitzvah."

"Except none of us are Jewish and I wouldn't trust any of you people to dance around with me in a chair above your heads." Stiles was getting one of those intuitively bad feelings—he knew going into that house was a mistake, but he had no way to prove it. Chris and Gerard weren't around, and Scott and Isaac _had_ seen the harpy go inside… Stiles sucked in a breath and asked, "We going or not?"

Derek nodded.

They crossed the street as a group, sidestepping big cracks and muddy spaces where grass grew. Isaac and Erica were going to hit the back of the house at the same time Derek, Scott, and Boyd busted through the front. Allison walked alongside them, while Stiles hung back a couple of steps, looking up at the gloomy, shadow-darkened house with trepidation.

His eyes followed a big crack in the siding that ran all the way down to some hydrangea bushes, to the… wire taped to the foundation and snaking through the yard, hidden amongst the overgrowth, pulled taut across where Scott was going to take his next step.

The wire wasn't _taped_ to the foundation, it was held there by something that looked like Play-Doh—plastic explosive, Stiles realized dimly.

It was a tripwire, hooked up to a bomb.

Stiles didn't think, he just reacted, feeling like he was choking on his heart as his stomach plunged. He grabbed Derek and Boyd by their jackets and yanked them back towards him, yelling, "Guys, guys! The house is gonna—"

And then the world ended.

Okay, okay, the world didn't _actually_ end, it just kind of felt like it had.

It really wasn't an overly dramatic or unfair comparison, because Stiles discovered that explosions on TV and in movies were nothing like the real deal—walking away in slow-mo and looking cool was next to impossible.

They all went flying backwards through the air like discarded toys, thrown by an invisible shockwave and a detonation of heat and flames roaring through the night. The noise was so loud and the blast so bright that Stiles was afraid he'd gone deaf and blind at the same time; sensory overload didn't have shit on this. He knew the landing would be the worst part—past experience had taught him that solid pavement wasn't a big supporter of unbroken ribs or whole sutures.

Suddenly Derek was there, arms clamping around Stiles in a death-hug (if there was such a thing, Derek would take first prize), and they tumbled for what was only seconds but it seemed like forever. It was a strange feeling—there was no time for breathing or pain or to worry about the others, everything was happening so fast, but time itself seemed to be slogging through mud.

Derek grunted as he hit the ground first, taking most of the impact and getting the wind knocked out of him. Quickly he rolled over so Stiles was underneath him and leaned his weight on his elbows, shielding Stiles from falling cinders and debris without crushing him.

Even with his concussion—which made everything about five times more confusing than usual—Stiles recalled something his father had told him after a bomb scare at his elementary school: _If the explosion doesn't kill you, the crap falling out of the sky will._

Stiles' ears were ringing and his head was spinning and all of him hurt like a bitch, but in that exact moment, his world had narrowed to a Derek-sized pinprick.

The werewolf's eyes were squeezed shut and he was gritting his teeth, obviously in pain—less from the splintered wood bouncing off his back and more from the shock of the insanely loud noise. Stiles couldn't imagine how much sound at that decibel level had to hurt ears as sensitive as Derek's—tuning the radio in the Jeep to a rock station was usually enough to warrant some snarling.

A cut ran along Derek's cheek and blood was dripping into the stubble on his jaw, but already the wound was starting to knit itself closed. Stiles found he was mesmerized—and _totally_ going into shock, yeah, that had to be it, that'd be the only way to explain what he did next.

Stiles got his arm to work even though it felt like a wet noodle, and he reached up, touching the skin below the vanishing scratch with the pads of his fingers.

Derek's eyes snapped open, but they weren't red, just normal greenish-blue, wide with… huh, what was that emotion? Surprise, maybe? Perhaps total disbelief that Stiles was touching his face when he wasn't unconscious and Derek was… oh God, _leaning into his hand_ instead of biting it off?

Stiles couldn't believe it either, so at least they were on the same page about something.

The sound of a distant siren got everyone moving.

Derek sat up, sliding an arm under Stiles' lower back and helping him do the same, trying not to put pressure on his injuries. Smoke filled the star-dappled night air, but it was still easy to see that the house had literally been blown apart. Boyd and Scott had thrown themselves on Allison when the blast went off and they were helping her up. They looked dinged and shell-shocked but already healing, and Allison seemed dazed but had no visible injuries.

Even though Derek was right next to Stiles, he sounded far away when he spoke. "Is everybody okay?"

Scott was shaking plaster dust and ashes out of his hair. "I think so!" he exclaimed, and Stiles wanted to punch him for using his outside voice even though they were actually outside, because _ouch_, loud noises would be painful for a while.

But then Scott's eyes were flashing yellow and he was pointing at a blurry shape up in the sky. "Hey, is that—"

Derek and Boyd looked up, too, and seemed to raise their nonexistent hackles, anticipatory of the thing falling to the earth, while Allison and Stiles could barely see it. Isaac and Erica joined them from the other side of the ruined house, and a body—female, with crumpled wings jutting out of her back—came crashing down onto the hood of Stiles' Jeep.

Nobody knew what to say. The sirens were getting louder, and the harpy was just lying there, still and steaming but possibly alive, if her healing powers were working.

Boyd put what everyone had to be thinking very eloquently: "Well, fuck."

They brought the harpy to Scott's house, for lack of a better solution.

Stiles' Jeep was majorly dented—this time the mechanic wouldn't even be hot, since the hot mechanic was _dead_—but functional, so Erica and Boyd threw the bird-woman in back and drove off. Isaac rode with Allison and Scott, and Stiles went in the Camaro with Derek, too tired to even argue about the whole _you can't drive your own damn car because you're concussed and I'm growly_thing.

Scott's mom was working a double shift at the hospital, so she wasn't home. That was a majorly good thing, because there was no way to explain what the hell was going on—a lady with wings being carried up the stairs by a man the size of a house and a fugitive suspected of killing his father would scream _occult ritual_ or _kinky group sex gone terribly awry_, and Stiles didn't think he was in shape to be coming up with excuses for either of those things.

In fact, Stiles was feeling less in shape for everything by the minute. He volunteered to hunt around the McCall's kitchen for snacks, waited until everybody did their demented conga up the stairs, and then sat down at the dining table. He folded his arms and rested his aching head on them, trying to shove the pain and frustration and general _what-is-this-fuckery_ that he was feeling away.

"Everything okay?" a familiar voice asked, and was it bad that Stiles was getting used to having the crap scared out of him by Derek on a daily basis? Probably. "You look like shit."

Stiles made a noise somewhere between a grunt and a laugh. "Oh yeah, everything's peachy-keen, thanks for asking—you're really great at helping my self-esteem." He lifted his head as Derek pulled up a chair and put Melissa McCall's first aid kit—kept under the sink in the bathroom and labeled "STILES" in red marker, that woman had a sense of humor—on the table between them. "Shouldn't you be watching Three Dog Night? Will they eat the parakeet without supervision?"

"I'd like to think they're smarter than that," Derek responded, and then he was grabbing Stiles' jaw gently, tilting his head to get a better look at the gash on his temple. He frowned and his eyebrows frowned with him, and he was still so ridiculously good-looking that Stiles had to stifle a giggle. "Stay still. That needs to be cleaned out."

Telling Stiles to stay still was like telling a fat kid to stop eating french fries. He squirmed at the burn of disinfectant, chewing on his lower lip. He noticed the way Derek's shoulders hunched, the way his eyes darted down to Stiles' mouth and back to the butterfly bandages he was applying to his skin, but didn't know what to make of it. So he squirmed some more and did his best parody of Derek's "concerned" tone. "Everything okay?"

Derek looked like he was passing a kidney stone. "Super. Now take off your shirt."

"Pushy, but at least you asked this time." Stiles shrugged out of his jacket and attempted to pull off his shirt, but winced as a sharp pain traveled up his back when he tried to lift his arms.

Derek was suddenly much closer, carefully sliding the shirt over Stiles' head while studiously not looking at his face. "What hurts?"

Stiles snorted and deadpanned, "Uh, _everything_?" but then shuffled in the chair so that his back was to Derek. "I think there's a stick caught between some stitches, but don't quote me on that." He wasn't able to conceal a shiver as Derek leaned forward, slicing the gauze off Stiles' wounds with a razor-sharp nail. It didn't really matter if he shivered or not, his heartbeat would still give him away—damn werewolf senses.

One of Derek's hands skimmed down to rest innocently on Stiles' waist, and Stiles felt the contact like an electric shock through his nerves. He leaned back a little, into the unnatural heat Derek provided, and there was silence as Stiles felt him go completely still.

"You have a wood chip stuck in there," Derek said, his breath sparking goose bumps on Stiles' shoulder, and his _voice_… he sounded like he had something caught in his throat, the words warm and rough and sharp. "I should pull it out."

_Oh, God_. Stiles shut his eyes and swallowed, suddenly realizing that he wasn't just a crazy hormonal teenager, that he wasn't the only one who'd noticed this intense, burning _thing_ between them that was getting harder and harder to ignore.

He barely felt it when Derek's fingers plucked the wood chip out of his skin and his pulse was pounding in his ears for the second time that night, but for a totally different reason.

Stiles was leaning back even further, and Derek was leaning forward—he practically had Stiles in his lap, and now both his hands were clutching at him, urging and insistent. The angle was bad but they were in each other's space, noses bumping together—

"Hey Stiles, Scott wanted me to ask you if you found the…" Allison's voice trailed off from where she stood on the staircase, blinking rapidly as the two of them jumped apart. "Huh. That's… uh. What did I…? Oh, the Velveeta. Polly wants some Velveeta."

Stiles gasped in a breath and stared at Derek, who just stared back at him until they both processed what Allison said.

"Wait a minute, who the fuck is Polly?" Stiles asked, and then groaned in disbelief. "Jesus, don't tell me—"

Allison's mouth curved up into a smile that both confirmed his guess and transmitted _you should feel so lucky it was me and not one of them_. "Oh yeah. Her name is Polly, and she's awake."


	4. Chapter 4

There was a _thump_ from above them—like a muffled explosion, because they _totally_ needed more of those—and it had Allison, Derek, and Stiles all looking up at the ceiling, then at each other.

"What the heck was that?" Stiles wondered, catching his shirt when Derek tossed it at him, making sure to keep his mental party of joy and confusion and absolute terror to himself. "Sounded like somebody farted through a megaphone."

Allison did that disapproving thing with her mouth. "Nice metaphor."

Stiles yanked on his shirt and dialed his indignant self up to eleven, just for the hell of it. "Well _excuse_ me, but I haven't had time to come up with new joke material—sue me, I've been a little busy trying not to—"

Everything suddenly got sucked into searing, bubbling agony, lighting up Stiles' body from the inside like a Roman candle. It was blinding and disorienting and such a powerful sensation that Stiles was surprised his brain didn't melt in his head. He heard someone screaming and—oh, that was him, wasn't it? His head was swimming and his entire body felt like unstable gelatin, tingly and useless.

It was like somebody flipped a switch, everything changed so fast—Stiles felt like he was in the seventh circle of Hell, and then he was on his back with a view of the McCalls' ugly kitchen linoleum. He was half on the floor and half in somebody's lap—he smelled leather and dirt and ash, had to be Derek—and Allison was cradling his face and saying his name, urgency and panic clouding her features.

"Oh my God, worst bender _ever_," Stiles groaned. He noticed that Isaac, Scott, Erica and Boyd had joined them, looking various degrees of worried, and thought it through to a conclusion that made his mouth go dry. "Why… what happened to Polly?"

Scott's face turned an unflattering shade of green, while Boyd stared at his shoes and Erica chewed on her lip. Stiles already knew the answer to his question—felt it in his head, in his bones—but had to ask anyway.

Isaac spoke, haltingly and with an undercurrent of fear. "She's dead. She was fine, and then she kind of… collapsed into herself."

"Like a balloon that got all the air sucked out of it, or something," Erica added, trying to sound unfazed and not doing a great job. "It's pretty grisly, there isn't much left of her. No idea how we're going to—" Her eyes locked on the spot where Stiles' shirt didn't meet his jeans, and she gasped, pointing and taking a staggering step backwards.

"What? What is it?" Stiles exclaimed, sitting up… and realizing it didn't hurt to do that. _Oh, fuck. That can't be good. _He heard Derek suck in a sharp breath behind him, fingers coming to rest lightly on the skin on the back of Stiles' neck.

Skin that was turning an iridescent black, just like a harpy's.

Stiles gave Three Dog Night (with special guest star Scott "Werewolf Oven" McCall) instructions as to where to ditch Polly's body—another thing being a cop's son was good for, knowing how to get rid of dead people—and then he went home, sliding into bed as the sun rose.

He couldn't sleep, even though he was magically no longer in pain from his wounds. There was an insistent, annoying tugging in his gut, like a leash trying to pull him—well, probably to a slaughterhouse or Mordor or something.

At eight-thirty in the morning, Stiles renewed his belief in the ol' _I'll sleep when I'm dead_ philosophy, booted up the laptop, and lifted up his shirt to look in the mirror.

All of the cuts on his body were gone, vanished like they'd never been there, no scars or marks. Patches of shiny black skin were starting to spread in their place, meshing together and trying to wrap around from his chest to his back. Most people, after being relieved of such terrible injuries, would be running out in the street or calling their doctor, shouting about miracles—Stiles knew better than that.

He was alone and scared and panicking like a tourist in an unfamiliar airport.

As he reread the relevant parts of the bestiary, his breathing came faster and he started to shake and wonder when the hell his life had gotten so freaking weird.

Polly had attacked Stiles the other night to steal him for herself—which was the assumption they'd be working under, considering the klepto thing, although Stiles couldn't figure how who he was supposed to "belong" to. But instead of kidnapping him, she ended up trying to turn him, although Polly wouldn't have done it on purpose if she wanted to keep him around and, y'know, alive.

According to what Ye Ole Argents knew, men couldn't be turned into harpies. The toxin that changed women into winged beasts killed men from the inside out, which was exactly what was happening to Stiles. The transformation had begun when Polly died, probably triggered by some kind of mental connection to the other harpies. Supposedly, the only reasons Stiles was still alive was because he was young and healthy and a stubborn pain in the ass who was currently _freaking out_.

He didn't know how he'd missed his bedroom window being pushed open or Derek clambering inside like a deranged monkey, but suddenly there were hands on his face, bigger and rougher than Allison's had been, and Derek was telling him to calm down, to just _breathe_, but that wasn't helping and he knew he was babbling incoherently and—

Derek made a frustrated, growly sound, and then _holymotherofGod_ he was kissing Stiles.

It was dry and closed-mouthed, nothing to write home about, but it meant _something_, something bold and exhilarating and insane. Stiles found that his anxiety level was on the down slope, and reality got a little fuzzy as he returned the pressure, unsure of what to do, considering it was the first time anyone had kissed him. Turned out Stiles _really_ liked kissing, especially kissing Derek, but sooner or later they had to breathe.

Stiles blinked as he leaned back, panting and trembling for a totally different reason than before, and asked, "Uh… wow, would you mind telling me what the actual hell that was?"

Derek looked like he was just as fucked up as Stiles was—like he had also come to the conclusion that running _at_ one another and running _to_ one another were completely different things, and they'd just crossed that line.

Finally, Derek said in a neutral tone, "You wouldn't shut up. You were having a panic attack. I… stopped you." He paused to listen to something Stiles couldn't hear. "Your father's in the kitchen, and I think he's making pancakes—and dropping things."

Stiles got up and pulled on a hoodie to cover up his arms and neck, which were slowly but steadily turning the same greenish-black color as the area where his stitches had been. He rubbed his face and headed for the door, but paused with his hand on the knob. "You know we have to discuss the big gay elephant in the room, right? I mean, I'm… I'm dying, man. And I'm not sure there's a way to stop it."

Since when had he gotten so goddamn _calm_ about it?

"I'll find a way. _We'll_ find a way." Derek's voice sounded tight. "I've never been able to save anyone before… but now, with the pack… maybe I can save you." He paused, and added in a whisper, "And then maybe you can keep saving me."

When Stiles turned around, Derek had disappeared out the window, and the USB drive containing the translated bestiary was gone.

Stiles spent two precious, werewolf-free hours with his dad, and it almost felt normal.

His dad was still painkiller-loopy, but able to lounge on the couch with his cast propped up and eat half-burned blueberry pancakes while he and Stiles watched infomercials for amazing bras and blankets with lights in 'em and all kinds of crap. During one of the lulls (when he wasn't choking on something because he was laughing), Stiles felt a pang of longing for his mom, which wasn't all that odd—he thought about her a lot, and knew he'd never stop, and mornings like this one proved it. He'd always know she was missing from her spot between them, and he wondered what she would've said about the guy hawking the gizmo that was supposed to chop stuff when you hit its top.

Stiles was washing the dishes and up to his elbows in soap and water when his phone vibrated on the counter. Rinsing off and swearing under the sound of his father snoring in the living room, Stiles grabbed his phone and looked at the text he'd just received from Scott:

_Derek brought bes besti BESTIARY to vet w/ 3 dog night_ _get to Deeeaton's naow he knows how 2 FIX U!_

"But can he fix your grammar? I think not," Stiles muttered, draining the sink and digging around in his jeans for his keys. He swore again and with more words that started with _F_ when he realized he wasn't even _wearing_ jeans—he hadn't gotten dressed, which meant his keys were upstairs.

Stiles trudged back to his room and braced himself for the sight of Derek sitting on his desk solving a Rubix cube or some shit, despite the panic-attack-stopping kissing and him stealing the USB drive earlier. And honestly, Stiles had planned on taking the info to Deaton as an attempt to save his skin, so in the grand scheme of things—like _kissing Derek_—it was a drop in the bucket.

Except when he opened the door to his room—he remembered too late that he hadn't left it closed—it wasn't Derek waiting inside for him.

The surprise in the cereal box was a harpy, black skin luminous and green eyes bright, her unfamiliar features aquiline and pristine. Her talons were on display like knives on a magnetic strip, sharp and ready to shred, wings were spread out and curved. She grinned, showing seemingly endless rows of needle-like teeth, and let out a hiss of triumph.

Stiles backpedaled towards the door, but the reaction came an instant too late—he saw the bird-woman swoop towards him, and then he saw nothing at all.

Unlike every fictional character in the history of getting knocked out, Stiles didn't have a nice dreamlike moment right before consciousness slapped him in the face like a dead fish, because that would've been cliché.

However, he _did_ wake up to find that he was tied to a chair via his arms and legs, in a small room with a single light bulb hanging from the ceiling. Huh.

The pain was back, boiling and making Stiles catch his breath, but it was a different kind of pain than the scratches or the concussion—this was like the pain he'd felt in Scott's kitchen, only ten times worse, to infinity and fucking beyond. Nerves were being overloaded, and Stiles could feel his muscles spasm and his bones creak, every part of him straining to become something he could never be.

"Not a nice feeling, is it?" a voice asked. A doorway had appeared in the gloom and a decidedly female figure was silhouetted in it. The light behind her was bright and Stiles shrunk away from it, much to his own self-disgust and her amusement. "I didn't think so. It's a wonder you're even alive—I'm not sure how you've made it this far."

"Perseverance and force of will," Stiles snapped. He felt something shifting around in his back and tried to ignore it. He focused instead on the woman and heard more than saw her talons snapping out. _Stall, stall and maybe someone will find you._ "What's your prerogative anyway, Flock Leader? Did Polly _really_ want this cracker, or was that your idea?"

That earned him a laugh. "Polly… ah, to be honest, Polly was a dolt." She came closer and stood in front of Stiles, since there was plenty of light to see by now. A pretty woman, with severe features, a waterfall of loose black hair, and eyes that alternated between gray and that blazing shade of green. She examined her talons as if they were nails. "Low-level flock member, infiltrated the school for me, took a liking to you. When I found out who your friends were…" She smiled; her lips were painted red with what Stiles' _really_ hoped was lipstick, displaying two rows of human teeth… for the moment. "I couldn't pass up an opportunity like this one. But Polly's not the one who attacked you and your father; that was me."

Stiles tried to eye her critically but ended up looking dyspeptic. "And you are?"

"Aello."

"Oh, Jesus Christ." Stiles couldn't believe what he was hearing, but that wasn't new—this broad was one of the three original harpy sisters from the Greek mythology. He looked all around, expecting a couple more of her to join them from some dusty corner. "What about the other two?"

She was in his face, suddenly, talons splintering the wood of the chair like kindling, and she was growing those needle teeth and screeching, "They're _dead_—why else do you think I would be here, you filthy fucking _human_?" Aello took in a deep breath and a step back, trying to calm herself down. Twisted amusement lurked in her expression. "And can you guess whose fault that is? Why I built a new flock, came to this town, tried to turn you into a beast like me, even when I knew it would kill you?"

The last pieces of the puzzle clicked into place for Stiles, and damn, it wasn't a pretty picture. "Let me guess—revenge? Who was it, the Hales or the Argents?"

Another laugh from Aello, but this one was like scraping razor blades together. "It was _both_ of them. That _code_ that the Argents stick to mixed up with the Hales' sickening need to be the only supernatural entity within a fifty-mile radius… it made for an interesting relationship. We got too close one night, started snatching up the wrong things, and suddenly my family was no better than pigs in a slaughterhouse. My plan was simple, although it took years to prepare—come back in numbers and figure out what they valued the most so I could take it away. Turns out the Argents value very little and the Hales are all dead… save for one. And he's only got one thing that matters to him now."

"Yeah, and he's coming after me—" _I really, really, really hope so_, Stiles added mentally, "—and so are my friends, which means you signed your own death warrant when you brought me here." Looking at her waxy skin and short breathing and wild eyes, Stiles deduced something that scared him shitless, even through another wave of agony. "Oh my God. You're insane… you don't care."

"Why should I? You're already doomed—there isn't a way to stop the transformation, it's going to kill you before your pack manages to get past my flock." Aello sneered, skin blossoming black. "I want to see the look in Derek Hale's eyes when the last thing he cares about in this world is ripped away from him." She paused, wings unfurling in anticipation. "They're here."

Stiles knew from what happened to Polly that he'd experience each of the harpies' deaths like it was his own, and wow, he was really rolling in the clichés now.

_They can fix me, Scott said they can stop it_, Stiles told himself.

Annd there was the head-splitting agony, right on cue.

Stiles remembered fragments of time between the room with the harpy and waking up in the hospital, doped to the gills in morphine and scantily clad in a paper gown. No more black skin, no more changing bone structure—the stitches had returned and so had the wound on his head, like he'd never almost been changed into a he-bird. He had vague recollections of being soaked in blood and pain, seeing an old tin ceiling and then vast sky and tall trees—the house Aello had kept him in was falling down around her ears. He remembered being carried through the woods amidst constant apologies and snarling and frantic voices, pleading with him to hang on, don't give up.

Now, Stiles opened his eyes, figured out he wasn't dead, and immediately tried to sit up. He was prevented from doing so by a pair of lethal-looking knitting needles pointing at his throat.

He exclaimed, "Whoa, holy crap!" but it came out sounding more like something about carp.

"What do you think you're doing?"

Stiles would've known that angelic and ticked off voice anywhere—Lydia was sitting at his bedside, strawberry-blonde locks perfectly styled, makeup on and eyes focused. She had a convoluted mess of yarn in her lap; it looked like something Clara Barton might've sewn during her drunken last call. "You stay right there, or so help me I will pin you down with these things and it won't be pretty."

Stiles blinked, swallowed, focused on making his words come out right. "You're… here. What's… I'm not dead?"

Lydia rolled her eyes. "You know, you guys don't tell me much, but I'm pretty sure I would've figured that one out for myself." She pressed a button, and the head of Stiles' bed lifted into a sitting position. "I've been sitting here knitting you hats for the past day and a half—you should be thrilled." She leaned closer and whispered, "The story is that you had a concussion and all those wounds, but you went out with Scott and Jackson and Danny for some lacrosse practice anyway. You went to find a ball you missed, got disoriented, wandered off into the woods and fell into a ravine. It took a while to find you." Wink, wink. "It's a wonder you don't have any broken bones, and that no _wild animals_ came across you first."

Melissa McCall came in, and her face lit up at the sight of Stiles looking back at her. "Oh thank God, you're awake—how do you feel?"

Stiles glanced at Lydia, and tried not to grin when she patted his leg. "I guess I'm just glad a cougar didn't get me."

Everybody came to visit Stiles, leaving behind balloons and cards and so many teddy bears that he swore he felt his testicles trying to crawl back up into his body.

Erica brought copious amounts of glitter on one of her visits; Jackson stopped by for two minutes, spending that time flicking peanuts at Stiles from the corridor; Boyd occasionally sat in a corner and read magazines. Scott slept sprawled across Stiles' feet like a dog (har har) for the two days he spent in the hospital, while Stiles' dad took up residence in a chair. Knitted hats continued to accumulate at his bedside courtesy of Lydia, and whenever Allison popped in she glued frilly things to them. Stiles knew he'd never wear the hats, but hey, it really _was_ the thought that counted.

Finally, the doctor said that he'd clear him to go home the next morning, providing Stiles promised not to do any more wandering around Beacon Hills for a while.

Stiles played along with the cover story and made sure he appeared contrite and dejected, but secretly he couldn't have been happier.

That night there was a tap on his bedroom window, a while after Stiles had crawled into bed. He sat up quickly—the stitches pulled and burned a little, but no longer hurt—and expected to see Derek on the other side of the glass.

His late-night visitor was Isaac.

Stiles let him in anyway. "What are you doing here?"

"Hi to you too." Isaac climbed inside and glanced around, taking in the posters on the walls and the cluttered desk, not to mention the piles of dirty laundry and homework on the floor. "Nice place." He paused. "Derek didn't know. About the harpies, I mean. Said that massacre Aello was raving about happened when he was a little kid, so he didn't really remember it, and it wasn't something his family talked about. He had no idea she was gunning for you to get to him."

"I believe all of that except for the last part," Stiles said, gesturing towards the bed. They both sat down, Isaac somewhat tentatively, hands folded in his lap. "He figured it out somewhere in this mess—probably at Scott's house, when I started changing. How did Dr. Deaton manage to stop that, anyway? Hoodoo magic? Secret undiscovered werewolf superpower?"

Isaac shook his head. "Nope—Derek just needed to kill the harpy that tried to change you before you died. We took care of the rest of 'em. That's why Scott was trying to get you over to the vet's, so we could come up with a plan." He smirked. "Congratulations on having your ass owned, by the way—she only stole you because you _belong_ to him."

"That's a lot of lip coming from a pale-ass beanstalk." Stiles stood up and made a shooing motion towards the window; Isaac complied, throwing a leg over the sill. "Thanks for stopping by—now get back to those damn trolley cars before somebody sees you, like my _father_. The s_heriff_."

Isaac grinned in the dark and jumped out the window, landing gracefully in the bushes and sprinting off down the street.

Stiles was catching up on his backlogged homework at one A.M. when Derek finally dropped in. "I was wondering when you'd show up."

"You should be asleep."

"Yeah, well… I'm not." Stiles turned around in his desk chair and spread his arms, gesturing to the massive stack of papers next to him. "Instead I'm taking a chemistry test that's ten days late at this ungodly hour of the morning. If I knew what the hell I was doing, I'd feel all wise, like an owl."

Derek waited a beat, then came over and sat on the floor, leaning against a desk leg. "What kind of owl?"

Stiles was nothing short of shell-shocked—was super-growly Alpha werewolf Derek Hale _encouraging_ one of his ridiculous tangents? He almost didn't know what to do. "Probably a barred owl, maybe a snowy owl—wow, you actually asked me that." He narrowed his eyes suspiciously. "Why?"

Derek's expression was as open as Stiles had ever seen it. "Because I don't know what I'm doing, either. Here. With you."

Stiles huffed out a laugh. "That's… reassuring. I guess I asked for the big gay elephant conversation, right? Yeah." In typical fashion, his mouth was moving faster than his brain. "Well, I'm not dying anymore, so you don't have to—"

Derek's hand was fisted in Stiles' shirt, yanking him down so they were almost eye-to-eye. "Do you _really_ think," Derek began, speaking as if each word was being tortured out of him, "that I kissed you just because you were _dying_?"

Stiles bit his lip, noticing the way Derek's eyes flickered down and then back up. Tentatively, he curled his fingers around Derek's leather-clad arm, and responded, "So 'yes' would be the wrong answer, right?" Stiles watched the eyes in front of him flash red and dropped his gaze to the floor, absently comparing his bare feet to Derek's boot-clad ones. "No… I really hoped that wasn't the only reason, because I've noticed—" He used his other hand to make a vague flappy gesture. "—you and your face, for a while now, how could I not? Apparently you own me, too, or something, like that's not awkward. And you kept coming around, so I figured maybe…" He trailed off.

Derek was silent for a moment. "You figured right," he said quietly, loosening his grip on Stiles' shirt, but not pulling away. "Stiles, you've got to understand something—I'm not… I'm not good at this. At anything involving people, really. So I'm going to screw up, and I'm probably going to hurt you—not physically, but… but if you actually want whatever _this_ is, it's never going to be normal."

Stiles snorted and replied, "Dude, I don't even know what normal _is_."

_Whoa_, apparently that was the right answer, because Derek was surging upwards and kissing Stiles. It was the opposite of their first kiss; this one was hot and dirty, with tongue and teeth and plenty of touching. Feeling like he needed to hang on for the ride, Stiles grabbed Derek's face, fingers cupping his jaw, and now he had _a fucking werewolf_ arching into his touch, and Stiles was leaning down—

And falling out of his chair and right on top of the aforementioned werewolf, smashing their faces together in a semi-painful fashion.

Stiles groaned, cursing the klutziness that followed him around like the plague. "Shit. That's a boner killer right there. I think I bit my tongue. Although you were doing a pretty good job of that, so it's hard to tell." Derek was rumbling in a different way than usual, and it took Stiles a second to realize he was _laughing_. He hit him in the chest, hand bouncing off a pectoral muscle that felt like a brick. "Hey, the first time I hear you laugh it's at the expense of—"

"Stiles."

"Yeah?"

"For once in your life," Derek said, pressing their mouths together again, "shut _up_."


End file.
